Send an email. Jump rope. Send an email. Do some kettlebell push-ups. Repeat.

If the buzz around the Internet watercooler is correct, sitting is the new smoking and our sedentary desk jobs are slowly sucking the life out of us. We need to move around more, but ironically, the most ergonomic office setups can make it all too easy to get comfortable and settle in for a long day on the job. Vancouver-based Darryl Agawin’s No, Sweat! is a hybrid system that accommodates bodies in rest and bodies in motion.

advertisement

“I started exercising seriously about two years ago,” Agawin tells Co.Design. “I took all sorts of classes; yoga, pilates, calisthenics, plyometics, and good old bootcamp. After a while I realized that the equipment necessary for full workouts could be pared down into a few basic pieces.” In addition to his credentials as a fitness buff (that’s him in the Rocky-ready training montage above and in the pics), Agawin has a degree in cardiology technology and currently works in the cardiology department of a local hospital; the legit medical background and regular interactions with people who would directly benefit from healthy hearts greatly influenced his decision to design exercise/work collection.

Good design could mean saving a life.

Though midcentury maestros Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames sparked Agawin’s love for design, the postmodern stylings of Ettore Sottass inspired the aesthetics of No, Sweat! “It combined my love for the geometric functionalism of Bauhaus with a new fun feeling that I hadn’t felt since I was a child,” he explains. MDF and Baltic birch provided the smooth finishes he was after, on a student budget; the custom black-and-white print is part curl bars, part weight collars; and the touch of Memphis-inspired red was a result of months of indecision by the colorblind Agawin.

No, Sweat! was intended to be part of Agawin’s grad project from Emily Carr University, but due to some bureaucratic twists and turns, he wasn’t allowed to show it alongside the other entries in the show. As of now, it remains a prototype, but should act as inspiration for all of us to take a (literal) stand against stationary afternoons. “Good design could mean saving a life,” he says.